654 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. V. No. 121. 



known psychologist, is one of the directors of 

 this review. 



At the beginning of April a new American 

 monthly entitled Marine Engineering was es- 

 tablished. 



Peofessoe I. P. Roberts, Director of the 

 Agricultural College, Cornell University, an- 

 nounces that the College has undertaken to as- 

 sist teachers and parents interested in nature 

 study by distributing, free of charge, leaflets giv- 

 ing instructions for the making of accurate ob- 

 servations of common objects. 



An editorial article in Garden and Forest in- 

 cludes a letter addressed to the Secretary of the 

 Interior by the committee of the National Acad- 

 emy of Sciences appointed to consider the for- 

 estry policy of the government, which outlines 

 the report, which will shortly be presented. 

 This letter states that the report now in 

 course of preparation provides: (1) That au- 

 thority be given to the Secretary of War to 

 make details of troops to protect, until a forest 

 service is organized, the property of the govern- 

 ment ; (2) That a permanent forest bureau be 

 established ; (3) That a commission be ap- 

 pointed to institute, under the supervision of the 

 Director of the Geological Survey, topographical 

 surveys of the reservations and determine what 

 portions of them should be permanently reserved; 

 and (4) to authorize the Secretary of the Inte- 

 rior to issue regulations for the protection of the 

 reservations, for sales of timber, for entrance to 

 the reservations, etc. 



In Science Progress for April, Professor E. B. 

 Poulton, of Oxford, prints, under the caption 

 'A Remarkable Anticipation of Modern Views 

 of Evolution,' a note showing that Dr. James 

 Cowles Pritchard, a distinguished pre-Darwinian 

 anthropologist, anticipated by half a century 

 the arguments urged by Weismann in favor of 

 the non-transmission of acquired characters. 

 This fact was brought to Professor Poulton's 

 notice by Professor Mendola; and on consulting 

 the work of Tritchard, entitled ' Researches 

 into the Physical History of Mankind ' (2d edi- 

 tion, 1826), Professor Poulton ' found that other 

 important ideas are anticipated in it. ' It throws 

 an interesting side light not only upon the ' an- 

 ticipation,' but also upon the attitude of Pritch- 



ard's mind toward the subject, that in a later 

 edition of the work he cut out the passage. It 

 is for this reason. Professor Poulton thinks, that 

 the anticipation escaped the notice of ' Darwin, 

 and others,' who ' always went to the later edi- 

 tion.' 



In an account of the work of the Lowell Ob- 

 servatory, for the last three months, published 

 in the New York Tribune for April 17th, we are 

 told: " Dr. Lee, who was in charge of the Ob- 

 servatory in the Southern heavens, announces 

 that since January 1 more than three hundred 

 thousand double and triple stars had been 

 measured." Even for ' Dr. Lee,' from the vant- 

 age ground of an ' observatory in the Southern 

 heavens,' this is doing finely — 23 of them 

 ' measured ' per minute, day and night, more 

 than half 'new,' as the Tribune t&Ws us \ We 

 venture to suggest, however, that the Tribune \Sr 

 mistaken in stating that Sir John Het schel made 

 larger additions to Southern stellar astronomy. ' 

 In his odd moments we are told that ' Dr. Lee ' 

 discovered 'many brilliant stars.' " In addi- 

 tion to these discoveries, his corroborative 

 points of argument as to the formation of heav- 

 enly bodies will be exceptionally interesting — ' ' 

 the Tribune concludes. 



A Reuteb dispatch from Cape Town gives 

 Dr. Koch's report on the rinderpest to the Sec- 

 retary of the Agriculture Department, part of 

 which is as follows : "I succeeded in immuniz- 

 ing within a fortnight several animals by means 

 of a mixture of serum and virulent rinderpest 

 blood to such a degree that they were enabled" 

 to withstand an injection of 20 com. of rinder- 

 pest blood, a ten-thousandth part of which is a 

 fatal dose. From this fact I judge that the 

 immunity of these animals is of a much higher 

 degree, and I believe it is an active immunity 

 equal to that of a beast which has contracted 

 rinderpest and has then recovered. It is par- 

 ticularly important to know that only 20 com. 

 of such serum are required to immunize one 

 animal, and therefore one liter suffices for fifty 

 head of cattle. A second and equally important 

 fact is that one is able to render immune 

 healthy cattle with the bile of such as have 

 succumbed to rinderpest. In this case one 

 hypodermic injection of 10 ccm. is sufficient. 

 This immunity sets in on the tenth day at 



